


Monstrous Inside and Out

by Dracoduceus



Series: Zine Fics [6]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Discussion of gore, Established Relationship, I cannot emphasize "Body horror" enough, M/M, Monstrous Transformation, Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:00:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26886256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: It started with a bit of hair on the pillows. They joked about it...And then it wasn't funny. McCree was slowly changing into something...something that went beyond medical knowledge or any kind of logic. As he transformed, Hanzo stayed beside him and he couldn't help but wonder when his love will run out. When he finally draws the line, when he stops loving a monster.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Series: Zine Fics [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687132
Comments: 8
Kudos: 55
Collections: Danger & Dread: A McHanzo Horror Collection





	Monstrous Inside and Out

**Author's Note:**

> **Please mind the tags.**
> 
> Written for the Danger and Dread Zine which sadly fell through. The art in this piece is done by the amazing and absolutely wonderful [Trimmerlist](https://twitter.com/trimmerlist). 
> 
> Beta'ed by [IchigoWhiskey](https://twitter.com/ichigowhiskey).

When Hanzo first noticed the bald patch in McCree’s hair, he laughed. “You’re getting old, cowboy,” he teased, putting his fingers against the bit of skin that he could see. 

McCree made a face and swatted at Hanzo’s hand. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.” Hanzo pretended not to see how he carefully finger-combed his hair to hide the spot. When McCree came out of the bathroom, he kissed him gently in apology. 

By the end of the day, McCree had another bald patch. He and Hanzo brushed it off as movement of hair—they simply hadn’t noticed it in the morning, hadn’t noticed a slow progression of hair loss.

“You’re an old man,” Hanzo teased, kissing McCree gently. “I’m married to an old man.”

“You’re older than me!” McCree cried, scooping Hanzo up. He immediately sat back down with Hanzo in his lap. “Or are you just married to me for my money? To become a wealthy heir once more when I kick the bucket?”

Hanzo laughed and pushed McCree back on the bed and kissed him. “That’s the only reason to be with an old man,” he teased and McCree growled playfully.

“I’ll show you  _ old _ .”

The next morning, there was another bald spot—and a clump of hair on their bedding.

They visited Angela. “This happens,” she told them, though she couldn’t hide her concern. “You  _ are _ getting older.”

McCree clung to the attempt at levity. “Why is  _ everyone _ talking about my age?” he asked, though that joke also fell flat.

Angela ran a hand through his hair and lifted a few brown hairs which had been pulled out by the motion. Wiping her hand, she touched his cheek and checked her hand; there was no hair. “Well,” she said slowly. “I’ll take a few blood samples and run a few tests. If you think you can sit still long enough, I can have Athena map out your skull so we can monitor any changes. We’ll…just have to keep an eye on it. In the meantime, no smoking, no drinking—at all. I really mean it.”

They traded expressions. It wasn’t just a matter of  _ wanting _ anymore. Years of their vices had led to addiction—they would  _ both _ go through withdrawals, since Hanzo would abstain with McCree in sympathy.

Hanzo put a hand on McCree’s shoulder, pressed his cheek to McCree’s hair. “We will,” he promised. “For how long?”

Helplessly, Angela shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “It will take a day or two to figure out…well, we’ll get results in a day or two. I hope they’ll tell us something.”

“Right,” McCree said and clapped his hands together. It sounded unnaturally loud in the somber silence. “That it, doc?”

“Sit still,” Angela told him. “I need to ask you to move, Hanzo, so we can map his skull. You’ll need to come back daily for us to see a pattern.”

An hour later they left, McCree nervously pulling his hat lower on his head.

“If it was slower, that’s one thing,” McCree admitted when they made it back to their room. “And you know I’m not one to be vain but…” he shook his head ruefully. “This ain’t normal.”

Hanzo put a hand on McCree’s cheek and drew him in for a soft kiss. “I know,” he murmured. “I’ll get us some lunch?”

The smile that McCree gave him was weak. “Thanks, sugar bean.”

Shaking his head at the silly nickname, Hanzo kissed McCree again and slipped out the door.

* * *

By the third day there were much larger patches of hair that werewas missing and McCree wore his serape like a hood when he wasn’t wearing his hat. The team was gracious enough to not mention any of it, to pretend that nothing was amiss, but when McCree was looking, they cast worried and sympathetic looks toward Hanzo.

“This ain’t normal,” McCree whispered to Hanzo the fourth night, in the darkness of his room. “Little by little, yeah –; not…not  _ clumps _ . Not this much; not this fast.”

Helplessly, Hanzo kissed McCree’s forehead and drew his fingers through McCree’s hair and tried to ignore the way that more hairs clung to his fingers and more hairs clogged the drains of their shower and that every morning, there was more hair on their pillows.

The tests came back inconclusive. By then, the hair on the right side of McCree’s body was beginning to fall out.

After speaking with Winston, they pulled him off the roster. He was  _ fine _ , they all agreed, but they weren’t sure about the underlying cause. Until they could get a better idea of what was happening, he’d have to remain behind.

Despite his distaste and the bitter taste of uselessness that it let in his mouth, McCree had to agree. So, he sat there, kissed Hanzo goodbye and then would have to wait for his return after each mission. Nobody commented about the hood and hat over his head, or the way he was always covered.

On the seventh day, McCree found blood in the foam from brushing his teeth. He rinsed his mouth and winced when the water ran red when he spat it out. Opening his mouth and stretching his lips to bare his teeth, McCree moved his head until he saw where his gums were red and swollen.

Shaking his head, he rinsed the sink, tried not to poke the spot with his tongue, and ignored it. It was hard to eat on that side and his jaw ached all day, making him grumpier than usual. He could tell that it concerned Hanzo, who was already on edge from cutting out his vices in sympathy with his husband.

That, combined with the constant, throbbing pain of his tooth and jaw, only made him more frustrated. Perhaps a little callously, he refused to let Hanzo accompany him to his evening appointment with Angela and tried to ignore how much it hurt to see the hurt look in Hanzo’s face before it was hidden.

Angela immediately saw that something else was wrong and demanded to know what it was, demanded to know why Hanzo had not accompanied him. So, McCree admitted that he had chased Hanzo away but then couldn’t avoid telling her that his tooth and jaw had been hurting all day.

She gave him medicine for it and scolded him for being such an idiot.

All tests were still inconclusive. Just in case, she ordered a full-body scan done by Athena. It took some time of McCree lying perfectly still while Angela filled his ears with stories of the ancient MRI machines of the past centuries. Athena’s scans would of course come out much clearer and much more accurate—and unlike MRIs, Athena could render a 3-D image in three dimensions, as opposed to being limited to two dimensions.

“You have a few anomalies in your jaw,” Angela said quietly. “They look like…well, it reminds me of what you see with children while they’re growing their adult teeth.”

McCree huffed as he pulled his clothes back on. “I’m long past that, Ange.”

“I know,” she said very quietly, inspecting the eerie image of McCree’s skull. He’d seen a lot of disgusting, horrific things but there was something intensely unnerving about seeing a recreation of his bones hovering in the air in front of Angela.

She flashed a quick, tense smile at him and pointed at his jaw. “See these here?” she asked. To McCree, they looked like the bumps you’d see on the underside of gardening gloves. Surrounding them were darker spaces. “The white are your bones and the dark are void spaces. Or rather, it’s more likely that they’re just ‘not-bone’.” She did something and the image of his skull enlarged until it was the size of a beach ball. The edges of the skull grew a little grainy, the fine contours blurry when blown up so large.

Angela pointed at his teeth, some of which were crooked or pitted with dark spots. “You can see all of your cavities and fillings,” she said dryly and dropped her hand a little to point at his jaw. “See how it almost looks like a bullseye? White—a tooth—and then dark, then white again for your jaw? You see that, as I said before, in children while they’re growing in their adult teeth.”

McCree walked around the image, mentally counting the teeth and pointed to the one that was hurting. The “lump” was more pronounced, had nearly pierced the border of grey that was present beneath every other tooth, enough that it seemed like he had a single, enormous tooth in that socket. “So, I’m growing a whole new tooth?” he demanded.

Clearly baffled, Angela shook her head. “I’m concerned…nevermind. I’m going to give you supplements and some painkillers. Take the supplements every day—I  _ mean it _ , Jesse,  _ every day _ —and use the painkillers when it hurts too much.”

“Ange—”

“I know how you feel about painkillers,” Angela interrupted, eyes and voice hard. “But they exist for a reason and currently, you’re benched.” Her face softened. “You don’t like to be in pain any more than the rest of us like to see you suffer.”

Thinking about what his pain had made him say to Hanzo, McCree reluctantly agreed.

Hanzo wasn’t in their room when McCree returned and his heart sank. It was late by the time he had finally left Medical, and he should have been in bed, but it was as neatly made as it had been when they left that morning.

Running a hand through his hair and trying to ignore the way that hair fell out between his fingers, McCree put his bag of medicine on the counter and walked back out into the hallway. Despite being together for nearly two years and more or less living together, they weren’t “officially” sharing rooms. Overwatch was still illegal—bureaucracy at its best—so recruitment was low. There was no need to “officially” move Hanzo from his room into McCree’s and so they used it as an almost spare room for the both of them.

It still had a bed though, and it still had some of Hanzo’s stuff. Enough that spending the night—or a few nights—wouldn’t be an issue.

He hesitated at the keypad before sighing and knocking. There was no sound on the other end but McCree knew that Hanzo was awake, was sitting on the bed and staring at the door.

Leaning close, McCree pressed his forehead against the cool metal. “I’m sorry,” he said. Mei’s room was just down the hall and Zenyatta’s across the hall and not that he thought that they’d blab, but he figured that his pride could take the hit for Hanzo. “I…shouldn’t have said those things. It’s just…I don’t know what’s happening and it’s terrifying.”

There was no sound on the other side of the door. Hanzo wouldn’t make a sound as he stood and walked to the door; McCree could almost count down the seconds before Hanzo opened the door. His lips were pressed tight, the lines between his brows and at the corners of his eyes deepening as he frowned.

He said nothing—it was time for McCree to talk, not him.

McCree swallowed hard and stepped forward, sighing in relief when Hanzo didn’t take a step back, didn’t back away from him. “Look,” he said very quietly. “I’m scared—I’m fucking  _ terrified _ . Everything I do, I’m suddenly wondering if I’ve always done it this way, if it was a sign that…that…” he shook his head. “I shouldn’t’a said those things, not when all you’ve done is try to help me. And me being afraid…it ain’t no excuse for lashing out like that.”

For a long moment Hanzo watched him with eyes like carved stone before he softened, his shoulders slumping. He stepped into McCree’s arms. “I’m scared too,” Hanzo whispered. “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

Instead of taking McCree into his room, Hanzo closed the door behind them and led them to the room they shared. They curled up in bed together, trading lazy kisses until they both fell asleep.

* * *

When McCree woke up, he found that his pillow was bloody and two teeth were on his pillow. He scooped them up quickly, but the motion woke Hanzo and he stared in horror at the blood.

“Ange thinks…” he trailed off. It sounded silly, even when presented the evidence. His mouth was tacky with blood; his gums were swollen and his tongue felt heavy, giving him a slight lisp. “She thinks I’m growing new teeth.”

He fled into the bathroom where he rinsed out his mouth and very carefully brushed his teeth. There was more blood in the sink when he spat, and all he could taste was copper as he dutifully swallowed his prescribed supplements.

“I’ll get breakfast,” Hanzo said quietly and kissed McCree’s cheek when he came out of the bathroom. He had changed the sheets; the old ones were bundled in the laundry basket next to the door.

McCree caught Hanzo’s chin and kissed his nose then the corner of his mouth. “I love you,” he breathed.

“I love you,” Hanzo echoed with a weak smile. “I’ll see you in just a bit.”

Test after test was inconclusive. Another scan of his skull showed that the lumps in his jaw were moving irregularly. It was a constant ache and Angela reluctantly increased his dose of painkillers.

She tested for radiation and found nothing more than she would expect from a Crisis baby. Bloodwork came back with nothing—and McCree must have given up more than a liter of the stuff to her over the past few days. Urine and fecal samples came back negative for anything that wasn’t already expected in a man his age with his kind of lifestyle.

“This is frustrating,” Angela snapped, slamming her fists down on the table.

McCree ran a hand through his thinning hair and made a face when more brown strands came free in his fingers. “I know,” he said tiredly.

“But do you feel fine otherwise?” Angela asked him sharply. “No decrease or increase in appetite? No weakness? Difficulty sleeping?”

“No more than usual,” McCree murmured. “You know how I’ve always been, Ange.”

Muttering to herself, Angela paced. “I need to do more research,” she said. “Do I have your permission? It will be anonymous,” she added.

“Only way to know,” McCree said reluctantly. “What do you need me to do?”

Hanzo returned shortly after with a tray of food for the three of them. He had brought foods that would be easy on McCree’s tender gums and jaw and though the concession was appreciated, McCree was inexplicably frustrated by it as well.

“He said that you think that a new set of teeth may be growing in?” Hanzo asked Angela.

She scrubbed a hand down her face. “The scans that we took…implies that. But obviously McCree is much older than having his teeth fall out.” She took a big bite of her stew, chewed, and swallowed. “For now, I’ve given him supplements since it really  _ does _ appear that he’s growing in new teeth—I want to be sure that he’s not taking calcium from his bones to compensate. I’ve also given him painkillers.”

“He lost two teeth this morning,” Hanzo said quietly.

Angela nodded and McCree tried not to be frustrated that they were talking about him as if he wasn’t there. Right now, this was just about bringing Hanzo up to speed—and Hanzo deserved to know.

McCree very carefully spooned the broth into his mouth and swallowed as they talked about supplements, medication, tests, research. He was somewhat surprised that Hanzo seemed to have such a grasp of medical terminology and instead tried to watch with amusement as Hanzo asked question after question.

The idea that this might kill him was ever-present and seeing Hanzo asking such questions, watching Angela’s answers with sharp eyes…it was endearing. Very suddenly he remembered a quote from an old movie: “she’s already working on plans A, B, through Z. Me? I’m trying to memorize the details of her face, like it’s the first time I’m seeing it…or the last.”

The thought made the spoon slip from his fingers. Immediately Angela and Hanzo turned and looked at him. “What is it?” Hanzo asked, brows knit with concern. He looked like he had aged in the few days since this had started. There was more silver in his hair and beard, more lines carved into his face. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“No,” McCree said, struggling to keep his voice even. “No, I’m fine.” Hanzo’s expression said that he clearly didn’t believe McCree but he mercifully didn’t press.

Angela ran a hand down her face again. “I need a few days to do research,” she said reluctantly. “Let me know  _ immediately _ if you notice any changes—and I mean  _ immediately _ .”

“What should we look for?” Hanzo asked.

She made a helpless gesture. “If this was a normal illness, I could tell you,” she said. “But it’s not and I don’t know what it is. Most concerning is weakness—if he’s making new teeth, where is the material coming from? Keep a watch on his diet—eat and drink regularly, even though I know you’re going to be in pain. The pain will put off your appetite but you need to eat and keep up your strength. Make sure you take your painkillers and supplements. If you lose more teeth,  _ tell me immediately _ .”

“The blood might put off your appetite even more, or make your stomach upset,” Hanzo murmured, glancing at McCree. “Anything else?”

She shook her head helplessly. “I wish I could do more,” she told them apologetically. “But I’ve never seen anything like this.”

They were quiet for a long moment, not sure how to lie and tell her that it was alright.

Especially since they weren’t sure if it would be.

* * *

They woke up with more hair on the bed. McCree was losing it in patches on his body now—he had always been hirsute but now he was patchy and Hanzo teased him in a wobbly voice that he now was beginning to look like a Mexican hairless dog.

McCree tried to laugh, if only to keep himself from crying.

The hair on his body, his facial hair, even his eyebrows began to fall out. Most confusingly, his skin still seemed healthy, as did his muscles.

His jaw always hurt and there was always a bit of blood when he brushed his teeth.

McCree swore as he looked down and found the shower clogged with his shedding hair. He continued to swear in every language he knew until Hanzo came in, looking concerned. “I can’t,” McCree snapped before Hanzo could ask what was wrong. “I fucking can’t, I just…”

Much to his shame, he felt tears welling up in his eyes. They burned, felt a thousand degrees hotter than his own skin. Immediately Hanzo ran to him and uncaring that he was fully clothed, stepped into the shower, hugging him tightly.

“Your body’s changing,” Hanzo said quietly. “It’s scary.”

McCree scrubbed at his face, trying to ignore that the motion dislodged more hairs which clung to his skin. “Did you just make a fucking puberty joke?”

“I’m sorry,” Hanzo murmured. “I…don’t know what to say.”

“I’ll probably find it funny later,” McCree lied weakly.

Hanzo hugged him tighter. “Nothing I can say or do will make this any better,” he said against McCree’s chest. His hands moved soothingly up and down McCree’s back. “It’s painful to watch you suffering, knowing that I can only sit here and watch and try to make it more bearable.” He leaned back and cupped McCree’s cheek. “But I’ll always be here for you.”

“I don’t know why I’m crying,” McCree grumbled, scrubbing at his face again. Hanzo batted his hands away and wiped hair and water out of his face. “It’s fucking stupid—what’s a bit of tears gonna fix?”

Hanzo hummed. “It’ll make  _ you _ feel better,” he pointed out. “And I’ll settle for that.”

Leaning down, McCree kissed his husband gently and Hanzo sighed, melted into his embrace. “It’s just…”

“I know,” Hanzo assured him when he trailed off. “This is…this is not something that we can see or touch. This isn’t a threat to neutralize or a shot to take or some foreign dignitary to take. This is something invisible, something that we don’t know. All we can do is sit back and wait for news that might not come.”

“Thanks,” McCree said thickly.

Hanzo made a face at him. “We’ll do what we can,” he said. “We’ll manage it day by day until Dr. Ziegler has an answer for us. And…for what it’s worth I’ll be here with you.”

Closing his eyes, McCree swallowed. “Yeah,” he said and slowly leaned down to press his forehead to Hanzo’s. “And…that means the world to me.” Hanzo’s calm soothed McCree’s fears—if Hanzo was afraid, only then should McCree be as well. His cool logic kept McCree’s panic at bay.

Without Hanzo, he didn’t know where he’d be.

“I love you,” Hanzo murmured and kissed McCree gently.

* * *

McCree placed an order for a set of trimmers from the next supply run. “I’d rather be bald and hairless than patchy,” he told Hanzo when they arrived.

It was the first time that he went out without a hat or a hood in a week and a half. The team teased him of course, joked that his shiny, bald pate was blinding them with the reflection of the lights. They asked why of course, and Hanzo snickered—as they would expect him to—when McCree explained that he was  _ old _ and going bald, that the young whippersnappers that were teasing him should have respect for their elders.

That explanation was very in line with what was expected by their small team—and that had always been McCree’s strength: playing up to what people expected to see.

In private, McCree rubbed his bald head, his bare chin, his smooth chest with an unreadable look. Hanzo stepped up behind him, running his hands over McCree’s chest and pressed kisses to his shoulder blades.

McCree shivered. “Somehow it feels more sensitive,” he said and Hanzo smiled, rubbing his beard against McCree’s bare back.

“You know what else might feel more sensitive?” Hanzo mused suggestively, running his hands over smooth skin. It was strange not feeling the gentle rasp of McCree’s hair over his rough fingers and he wasn’t sure he really liked the difference, but he wasn’t about to tell McCree this.

Instead he made to distract them both, tugging McCree back to bed.

* * *

Another tooth appeared on the bed and two more were loose. By the end of the day, they had fallen out and McCree had a lisp from swollen gums and missing teeth. In the sockets of the first teeth he lost, tiny pieces of pale tooth were beginning to peek out.

They did not look like molars.

McCree’s jaw hurt enough that it was difficult for him to eat anything solid. Clearly worried, Angela gave him protein shakes and Hanzo dutifully made sure he drank them. They no longer had dinner dates—Hanzo didn’t want to eat where McCree could see him and become jealous of the foods that he could no longer eat.

He took more medication—it was the only way to manage the pain.

On the eleventh day, he couldn’t put any weight on his right leg without agonizing pain. Hanzo stayed with him while Angela visited their room and looked him over with her handheld scanners. This time Baptiste came with her and they conferred quietly with each other as they poked at McCree’s leg and looked at the scans with deep frowns creasing their faces.

“Are you taking your supplements?”

“Every day, doc,” McCree promised. “Ain’t I?” Hanzo nodded in mute agreement.

Angela showed him the scan. “This is your left leg—and this is your right.” She showed him two pictures and by then he could recognize the signs of his misspent youth: pins and plates from hoverbike injuries, healed without the expensive biotics available in only the most high-end hospitals. They were present in both pictures but in the one on his right they seemed…muted somehow.

He looked back and forth between the scans. Bone showed up as pale streaks over the black surface of the prints. The plates and pins and other inorganic bits showed up stark white in the scan of his left leg, as clearly as if someone had painted them on the picture; in his right, they almost seemed to blend into the bone, a drop of harsh white that faded away at the edges.

Hanzo peered closely at the scans. He ran a finger over the image of McCree’s right femur. “Fractures?” he asked Angela.

Baptiste nodded. “Hairline fractures. Have you been in pain, McCree? Walking differently?”

“Wouldn’t notice if I was,” McCree told both medics ruefully, making a face as he moved to run his fingers through his hair and only touched the smooth skin of his shaved scalp. “I’m so hopped up on painkillers I probably wouldn’t notice much if you broke my kneecaps.” Hanzo and Angela gave him nearly-identical sour looks while Baptiste only raised an eyebrow and looked pointedly at McCree’s leg, which had been giving him enough pain that he couldn’t leave his bed.

“You see these sometimes,” Angela explained. “If you injure one leg, you put more weight and stress on the other leg to compensate.”

Hanzo looked at her. “Do you think that’s what’s happening?” he asked.

“Yeah…” McCree drawled. “And what about my plates disappearing?”

Angela shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said tiredly as Baptiste listened quietly. “I pulled previous scans I took and it shows them just as clear as the one you see for your left side. The most recent one was when you twisted your ankle last month, remember?”

Turning his head, Hanzo disguised his laugh as a cough while McCree sighed. “Ange—”

“ _ Well _ ,” Angela interrupted before he could go on a diatribe of a man keeping his bets that he could run faster than the good doctor in heels. Four steps in and not used to the short heels that Ana had provided (why she had them in his size, no one dared ask), McCree had taken a bad tumble. He’d been in crutches for a day and a half while the biotics strengthened his old, resistant bones and mended torn muscle. “Those scans show your right leg to be just fine.”

Hanzo peered at the next set of scans that appeared. As Angela had said, the edges of the metal plates and pins were clear and crisp. “Maybe the fractures are some kind of…delayed stress?” he suggested.

“But that doesn’t explain why my bones are fucking  _ swallowing my plates _ ,” McCree pointed out. He tried to run his hand through his hair again and made a face. “So, what’s the verdict, doc?”

Angela made a face and glanced at Baptiste. “Bed rest,” she said firmly and Baptiste nodded in agreement. “Those fractures are a very bad sign.”

“They could be a sign of nutrient deficiency,” Baptiste said. “But you’ve been eating well enough here—as in, you’re eating regular meals. Perhaps it’s simply a sign of age and wear on your body from your…work. However, this only addresses the issue of the fractures and not…” he gestured helplessly at the dissolving bits of metal. “We may need to do surgery to have them removed.”

McCree made a face. “I’m already grounded,” he complained.

“You might need to have them removed,” Baptiste told him gently but firmly. “We don’t know what might be happening or if they pose a threat. By now the bone has long since healed…however, I’m not sure about its…durability.”

McCree scowled. “You’re talking about this being permanent. Not being able to walk.”

“It’s too early to know,” Angela told him ruefully. “But given the other issues we’ve been having…”

Hanzo put a hand on McCree’s shoulder. “What is your plan?” he asked.

The healers explained while McCree sat, staring at the lumps his leg made on the bed. With the new painkillers in his system, his right leg only ached a little, though he knew that as soon as the dose wore off it would be searing agony again. His stomach twisted.

When he looked up again, he found that Hanzo was setting up breakfast beside McCree’s bed. “I know you’re not that hungry,” Hanzo said. “But you haven’t eaten all day. Can you see if you can stomach anything? You need to keep up your strength.”

“I’m strong enough to dissolve everything,” McCree muttered sullenly and Hanzo reached out to tangle their fingers together. He sighed shakily when Hanzo lifted that hand and kissed his knuckles. It began a bone-deep ache that he swallowed; Hanzo’s kisses were worth a bit of pain.

Hanzo leaned in and kissed McCree far gentler than he would typically. Somehow McCree still didn’t feel as if Hanzo was treating him as if made of glass and he sighed again, trying to distract himself by the soft way that Hanzo’s chapped lips moved against his.

“We’ll get through this,” Hanzo told McCree gently and unbidden, McCree’s eyes went to his temples. Despite his undercut, the flash of silver was still visible. Hanzo smiled and his eyes crinkled—how had McCree not noticed?

McCree swallowed hard, a sudden well of emotion threatening to drown him. Hanzo, bless him, seemed to sense this and turned away to get their food to give McCree a chance to compose himself. They weren’t getting any older and given their hard lifestyle…was this how McCree would go out? Not with a bang, but with something that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye?

He scrubbed at his face, ignoring how his bones ached with the motion. Arthritis? Something worse?

For now, it didn’t matter.

For now, Hanzo was nursing his sick husband—and McCree was not an invalid.

Yet.

* * *

The next few days were agony.

McCree lost weight, unable to stomach food because of the pain that roared through his bones like Hanzo’s dragons. Through it all, Hanzo was always there at his bedside.

Wiping sweat from his brow, giving him his medicines and supplements and painkillers, reading out loud to him to distract him from the pain. He’d helped McCree to shower and bathe without a complaint, helped him to the bathroom despite McCree’s mortification.

The healers inspected his legs and spoke quietly among themselves as they inspected the scans. McCree didn’t like the look of concern on their faces. “What is it?” he demanded, short and angry in his pain.

They exchanged glances as if silently arguing with each other over who should tell him. In the end it was Baptiste; Angela looked away, her lips shaking. That she looked so disturbed, so uneasy, made his stomach sink even deeper. This wasn’t fear that he’d die, or determination that she should force him to live—this was a dark and visceral fear that welled in the throat and froze the limbs when presented with the unknown. When you were dragged forward and forced to face what disproved all that was known.

Her fear scared him. She had faced the horrifying, had faced that which would have terrified a lesser person, with a tired and unflappable stare. She had faced the death of those close to her with a stubborn chin and cold blue eyes.

That she couldn’t even look at him sapped what little strength he had.

“We don’t know,” Baptiste said, his voice shaky. McCree didn’t know him as well, but he knew that he was a survivor of the Crisis. He had seen a lot and that he was shaken as well quieted McCree’s pain-induced frustration.

Baptiste showed McCree the screen of the scanner and then angled it so that Hanzo could see it as well. At first McCree didn’t know what he was looking at. Once more he saw the ghostly images of his own bones highlighted by the gauzy shadows of tissue and muscles surrounding it.

It seemed that Hanzo didn’t have such an issue. He squinted, frowned, and leaned closer, which is what had caught McCree’s attention. “This doesn’t look right,” Hanzo said slowly. “It doesn’t…”

The big medic’s arm wrapped around the screen and pointed at the first bone. “Femur,” he said. His finger moved as he began pointing out each bone, lingering for a moment on the kneecap and then the split bones of the lower leg. “Patella. Fibula. Tibia.”

Impatiently, McCree continued down the line, eyeing the thick bone of his ankle, and then the split for each…what was it? Tarsal? Metatarsal? The fine bones like little plates, radiating from his ankle, that then split into his foot and then his toes.

He squinted. There was the long first one that extended from the upper arch of his foot to the ball of his foot and then…

The next bone, instead of lying mostly in line with the first, was instead bent  _ downward _ and…perhaps it was simply him not used to the minutiae of the human body, but…something didn’t seem right.

Aside from that bend of course. That bend was clearly not natural—he had kept his foot at rest, had not moved his foot in such a way to achieve such a horrific curve. The bones of his feet were doing it too, seeming to bend down and fucking  _ backwards _ toward his heel.

The medics were talking with Hanzo—presumably with McCree as well, but their voices seemed far away as he stared at his own foot. He didn’t dare ask them to pull away the blanket; call him a coward, but he was too terrified to see what it looked like in his flesh.

They talked about more in-depth scans; Angela said that she had a friend nearby and perhaps she could arrange to borrow more sophisticated equipment than Athena, who simply wasn’t designed for medical scans any more in-depth than what she had already assisted with.

Hanzo said something and McCree stared at his feet disbelievingly.

The thigh bone.

The split bones of his lower leg.

His ankle and those handful of bones that formed a bony, knobby paddle. They seemed almost…rearranged. But perhaps that was just his inexperience. He knew the human body, knew a lot about it after all the killing he’d done and after all the injuries he’d sustained in his life. But perhaps he just didn’t know…

He traced the line of the bones again.

They took the scan when he was lying down, so his hip and knee and ankle would be in line; his feet would not be at a perfect 90 o angle if he wasn’t actively flexing his foot.

But this scan…he reached out and zoomed in on his ankle. He didn’t want to know and yet…

Yes. Tracing the gossamer hints of flesh that implied his calf muscles in the black-and-white scan, he saw the angle—the oh, so slight angle—that his leg was pushed up by his ankle. He saw the angle that his foot was at rest, much lower than he’d expect, saw that definitive curve of his toes that should not be there.

McCree swallowed back his sudden nausea. Three sets of experienced hands leaped forward to help him but it was Hanzo that shoved the basin beneath his mouth as he heaved and heaved up what little he had left in his stomach. The pain of it brought tears to his eyes, made it feel like all of his muscles were convulsing painfully.

Instinctively he brought his feet up, tried to curl in on himself, but that just made it hurt worse and he screamed as his stomach roiled again. Bile burned his throat and his nostrils. When he came to again, still sobbing in pain, it was to someone gently wiping his face with a damp, warm cloth.

Then there was a prick in his arm—how he could feel it through all of the pain emanating from everything beneath his hips, he would never know—and then he knew nothing.

* * *

They’d had to sedate him, Hanzo explained later, when he woke up tired and groggy in the middle of the night. And he’d lost another tooth.

“What’s happening to me?” McCree demanded, voice thick and awkward around his missing teeth and from the lingering effects of the drugs.

Hanzo leaned in and kissed him so gently, so reassuringly, that McCree felt his shivers die down. They didn’t leave completely, but he wasn’t trembling quite as badly. “Whatever happens,” he said with a soft earnestness that brought tears to McCree’s eyes. Hanzo gently wiped them away with his calloused fingers. “I’ll still be here.”

“I love you,” McCree whispered, his voice cracking.

Leaning in, Hanzo kissed him again. His eyes were bright in the darkness. “I love you, too.”

* * *

When they scanned him again the next day, they found that his bones had changed yet again. From hip to knee, little seemed to have changed but below the knee…

He must have hurt Hanzo’s poor hands the way he clenched them so tightly as Angela and Baptiste inspected them. Seeing it before him, wrapped in his own flesh and muscle, was different than seeing it on an impersonal screen, laid out in shades of white on a dark screen.

It was horrific and only the fact that he hadn’t been able to stomach anything to eat that morning kept him from throwing up again in horrified disgust. His feet were now angled unnaturally away from his legs, more as if he were pointing his toes toward the foot of the bed than leaving them at rest to point toward the ceiling. They bulged awkwardly as they bent and then bent again at the knuckles of the toes.

“Foot binding,” McCree blurted out, startling the medics and Hanzo.

His husband made a faint sound of understanding while Baptiste peered at them in curiosity. “Foot binding,” Hanzo explained as McCree clenched his jaws shut to keep the hysterical babble at bay. “It’s an ancient practice in China, where a woman’s foot was broken and bound in shape. The toes are folded over,” he added. “As the girl grows, it is broken again and again until the foot can fit in a tiny shoe. I’ve heard it described as ‘lotus feet’.”

They all shuddered, Angela’s lips pressing thin as her eyes drifted, unbidden, to McCree’s mutilated feet. “Do they hurt?” she asked at last.

“Everything hurts,” McCree said sullenly out of habit. Then he paused and considered the question. “It… _ aches _ ? Like I’d been wearing heels and only just took them off.”

Angela didn’t seem amused by the allusion to that incident—or rather, she didn’t seem to notice it, nodding thoughtfully. “I’m…going to perform a physical examination now,” she said carefully. “With your permission?” when McCree nodded, she moved down the bed toward his feet, her hands hovering over them for just a moment before touching him.

She made a thoughtful noise that had Baptiste drifting closer. “The skin appears tougher,” Baptiste noted. “And…is it just me, or does his leg seem…different?”

“Reflex test,” Angela told him sternly. “Tell me what you feel.” She pulled out the pen that was clipped to her breast pocket and poked—gently—at the underside of his foot, moving in a line from ankle towards his misshapen toes.

McCree frowned. “I barely feel that,” he told her. “But I’m not surprised. You got me on some crazy pain meds, doc.”

She ignored him. Now she prodded him a little harder, focusing on the tender skin between the joints; when McCree’s foot finally twitched, it was to curl  _ deeper _ into its strange new bend, as if his foot tried to make a fist with a new joint in the bone.

It hadn’t tried to uncurl, as if locked in that position.

“Try to straighten your foot?” Angela asked, putting her hands on either side of McCree’s left foot.

Frowning, McCree tried and was frustrated that only the tips of his toes moved. He looked away, unable to bear staring at that horrific twist of flesh and bone and tendon that was his foot. It was as if he had been tortured and the foot forced to remain that way.

As if he had his foot bound and broken for the sake of beauty.

Hanzo squeezed his hand and McCree looked up. Though Hanzo looked scared he didn’t act like it. McCree could only tell by virtue of knowing him so long and so well, could see it in the tension around his eyes and in the corners of his mouth. But he smiled so softly at McCree that some of his fear and unease thawed, just a little. He squeezed McCree’s hand again as if to say,  _ it’s okay, we’ll get through this _ , and McCree hoped that he was right.

* * *

The next morning, he woke blessedly free of pain and utterly ravenous.

Hanzo was strict about keeping him on a diet of simple broth even though McCree was craving something heavier. A steak, still hot from the grill and still pink and juicy in the middle.

This was a kind of victory that required a celebration; the pain had not scoured him away and now he was  _ hungry _ .

But Hanzo was right—he had kept such a sparse diet that anything heavier would only make him sick, at least for that day. From the radiant smile on Hanzo’s face, McCree was certain that this stupid diet would only be a single day. Perhaps, despite the strange conformation of his feet and the lingering unease he had with seeing it, they would go out to dinner.

As he ate his broth—miso soup and, because Hanzo was the world’s most wonderful husband, a few slices of pork among the bobbing cubes of tofu—and pretended that they were at their victory dinner when he was finally better.

The last time they had celebrated like this, it had been at some kind of fancy restaurant. To be fair, they had been excited—it was their first wedding anniversary; a celebration that they hadn’t murdered each other yet, after the whole pomp and circumstance of the wedding that the team insisted on. Everyone had said that it would be different after their vows but it hadn’t.

Still, they had celebrated as if they won some great victory. Given their lifestyles, they kind of had—a great victory over time, over flying bullets and charging Heavies and those terribly quick Assassins. Against Snipers and Talon and each other, they had survived a year.

The fancy food hadn’t sat too well with either of them, but it was an experience together. After dining on too-rich things like smears of duck liver and chopped raw meat mixed with raw egg like what you’d give a spoiled pet, they had ducked out and gone to get greasy bar food and shitty Tex-Mex.

_ That’s _ the food he wanted now, not this thin broth. He’d take a whole bowl of that raw, chopped meat, which would slide wonderfully down his throat without the necessity of chewing with his tender jaw. But there was nothing quite like the satisfaction of biting into meat and feeling it give beneath his teeth, of feeling the juices dripping down his chin.

Despite the yawning hunger in his gut, he forced himself to eat slowly, putting the bowl down every once in a while, to make sure that it stayed in his stomach. It grated on his nerves and his self-control, but better to eat slowly and keep it down than have it come back again.

The next morning, he lost two more teeth and was so hungry that he snapped at Hanzo when he asked if McCree asked if he was ready for breakfast. Immediately contrite, he apologized to Hanzo, who seemed strangely unbothered by his outburst.

“It was a foolish question,” Hanzo said with a rather un-Hanzo-like laugh. But his smile was entirely relieved that McCree was in such spirits, was actually hungry for once, and McCree found himself smiling back despite his missing teeth. “Of  _ course, _ you’re hungry. Let me get you some food—if you can stomach a bowl of miso and rice, I’ll bring you some other foods as well.”

He could almost pretend that it was just breakfast in bed so long as he didn’t look at his feet or at the odd lump they formed. When Hanzo gave him the bowls of miso and rice, he fell upon their contents, eating far faster than he should have but he was just  _ so hungry _ .

Hanzo was clearly worried but he didn’t stop McCree from eating all that was before him. “I’ll wait a bit before the rest?” McCree suggested, half hoping that Hanzo had brought more food. The miso and rice had barely done anything to sate his hunger.

His husband smiled, tension lines around his eyes. “I didn’t bring more,” he admitted. “But that is because I was going to make you wait just a little bit to let your stomach settle, and I wanted to make sure that you had hot food.”

McCree smiled tightly, not liking the idea of waiting but he knew that it was for the best. He patted the bed next to him and Hanzo curled up at his side, relief in every line of his body. “I’ve worried you, haven’t I?” he asked as they both ignored the lumps of his mutilated feet.

“Of course,” Hanzo said softly. “It’s…a different kind of pain to watch you suffering. Nothing like what you’ve gone through but…”

McCree pressed a kiss to Hanzo’s temples. There was more grey there from his stress and worry, and lines were carved deeply into his eyes and mouth. “I’m sorry to have worried you,” he said softly, his hunger forgotten for the moment.

“I always worry about you,” Hanzo told him softly and turned to kiss him properly. “How about we spend the day in bed?”

As if McCree had any other choice, with his mutilated feet. He still agreed and they watched an episode of one of the cooking competitions that they had recently gotten addicted to.

When McCree’s stomach rumbled to punctuate the fast-paced tempo of the closing credits, Hanzo laughed and promised to return with more food.

As soon as he was gone, McCree steeled himself and threw the blankets back, forcing himself to stare at his feet. They had so obviously changed that he had a brief, dizzying sense of…he didn’t have the word for it. He stared down at his feet, feeling quite as if he were staring at someone else’s, or at some kind of realistic prop.

When he reached down to touch his knee, he could feel the sensation echoed back to him. It  _ was _ real, then.

Very carefully, he lifted his left leg and extended it as far as he could. It extended further than he expected, all without pain—as if this had always been.

He swallowed hard and pulled his leg in, watching it fold, horrifyingly accordion-like. But that was ridiculous—it seemed that there weren’t enough joints to make those kinds of bends and yet…

Closing his eyes, McCree took a deep breath the way that Ana had taught him to all those years ago. He let that same kind of battlefield apathy wash over him and opened his eyes again.

The leg before him was just that—a leg. It had hairless skin that felt thick and leathery beneath his calloused fingers. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was something odd in the main portion of the leg as well—as if the thigh and calf were shorter than they should have been for such a long leg.

But perhaps that was because of the new bend in the middle of what used to be a human foot—it added a few more inches to the overall length, but something wasn’t quite right. Not that there was anything  _ right _ about this whole situation.

He swallowed hard and inspected the foot. If he pretended that it wasn’t his own, then he could get through this.

The heel was tapered now, jutting out a bit like an animal’s paw. It dipped into that strange new bend, and then the curled-over toes. Perhaps the most unnerving was the realization that the toes had  _ grown _ —they were certainly longer now and had grown calluses over the knuckles, as if they had always bent this way. Now they looked like grasping claws, curled below the underside of the main body of the foot.

Squeezing his eyes shut, McCree pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes and took another deep breath. He wasn’t a biologist or a doctor, but he did know basic physics. The bends of the joints—as well as the mysterious calluses—appeared to imply that walking was done  _ on the knuckles of the foot _ .

The thought reminded him of Winston’s knuckle-walking; the curled-over toes, despite the “extra” joints and bends in the foot, almost resembled Winston’s hands.

He checked the time on the show. Only a few minutes had passed as he inspected his horrific new feet—he didn’t expect Hanzo to return for another ten minutes at least.

Very carefully he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Did he dare? He very slowly put his feet on the floor, halfheartedly trying to put them down normally; he winced in pain when the joints refused to bend the way he wanted them to. Taking another deep breath and repressing the nausea as he put his curled-over feet on the knuckles. Expecting pain, he very slowly began leaning weight on them and…

There was none.

Closing his eyes, he took another breath to get over the horrified nausea that churned in his stomach. His hands were shaking and he scrubbed his sweaty palms on the bed. Did he dare stand for real?

His bladder took that moment to remind him that he hadn’t addressed this need yet this morning; he supposed that that decided it.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he shoved himself to his feet and braced his legs, expecting the pain, expecting all manner of thing but not…well, he didn’t expect  _ nothing _ to happen. He swayed in place a bit, not quite used to the extra two or so inches of height that these strange legs afforded him.

Very carefully, he lifted a foot and put it down in his first step. He was wobbly, as if walking on stilts for the first time, but it wasn’t as bad as he had expected.

And it didn’t hurt.

He took another step and then another. It was like ice skating: he was unused to it at first, was a little wobbly, but he got used to the new spring in his longer legs and the odd feeling of walking on his knuckles.

So long as he didn’t think too much about it, of course.

He did his business quickly and brushed his teeth, trying to ignore the reddish tint that always seemed to be present when he brushed his teeth. Did he dare attempt a shower? His skin felt oily and sticky, as if coated in a layer of grime. This wasn’t by far the longest he’d gone without a shower, but that didn’t mean he  _ liked _ it.

No, he ultimately decided. He would attempt a shower only with Hanzo there—he didn’t know if he would slip and wasn’t confident that he could catch himself if he fell.

As he ducked out, he found that Hanzo had returned early and was staring at the empty bed with open concern—unusual in his relatively-stoic face. He did an almost comical double-take when he saw McCree in the doorway and it was only from the lifelong training to never drop his weapon that he didn’t drop the tray in his hands.

Hanzo quickly put the tray down and walked toward McCree, his hands outstretched as if ready to catch him if he fell but unsure about touching him. “Are you okay?”

Looking down at Hanzo, McCree couldn’t deny that he was somehow taller now, just enough to be noticeable, and Hanzo had to crane his head further back to look up at him. Gently, McCree touched Hanzo’s cheek. “Yeah,” he said as his stomach growled. He could smell the food: sausage and eggs and some of Lena’s blood sausage, and he wondered if Hanzo had guilted her out of it or if she had freely offered the unexpected treat.

His mouth watered and he looked past Hanzo toward the tray.

“Come on,” Hanzo said, hands twitching as if deciding where to land. “Do you need to lean on me? Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” McCree said again and looped an arm around Hanzo’s shoulders. They walked back together, though McCree didn’t need Hanzo to steady him. His strides were longer, and Hanzo’s shorter legs had to move quicker to keep up with him.

“Does it hurt?” Hanzo asked quietly as McCree carefully folded himself back into bed. He caught one of McCree’s feet and his hand twitched at the feel of it. Hanzo frowned as he inspected the thick knuckles, the awkwardly-curved toes.

McCree looked away. “No,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t even feel weird. Not really, at least. Just…different. Off-balance.” Hanzo’s lips were pressed thin and his hand ran gently over McCree’s mutilated foot before putting it back on the bed and pulling the blankets over them.

As if he couldn’t bear to see them.

Briskly, he picked up the tray and placed it over McCree’s lap before climbing in bed next to him. “Lena was willing to part with some of her blood sausage,” he said, a hint of wickedness in his voice and a twinkle in his eye. “As incentive for you to get better.”

McCree fell upon the food eagerly. It was difficult to chew with so many missing teeth—and with teeth that weren’t suited for it—but he managed while Hanzo watched. After polishing off the plate, McCree looked at Hanzo properly. “This must be…horrifying,” he said softly.

“Perhaps,” Hanzo agreed with a candidness that McCree appreciated. “But you are still the man I love and nothing will change that.” He put a hand on McCree’s forearm before letting it slide down to tangle their fingers together. “I love you, no matter what.”

They sat like that for a while, staring down at their tangled fingers, at the shape of Hanzo’s normal human feet compared to the misshapen lumps that McCree’s made in the blankets.

“Are you still hungry?” Hanzo asked after a while. “I can get you more if you’d like?”

McCree considered that. “Please?” he asked. “I know I shouldn’t eat this much but…” his stomach growled again and he smiled apologetically at his husband.

Laughing, Hanzo leaned in for a kiss before slipping out of bed once more.

* * *

Later that night, McCree woke. The entire day he had eaten enough to put a Crusader to shame and yet was still hungry.

He should have been sick, the amount he’d eaten, but instead he was only that much hungrier. Now, in the middle of the night, he was unable to go back to sleep.

Carefully, he climbed out of bed, doing his best to not disturb Hanzo. Luck was with him and Hanzo was deeply asleep enough to not notice him tug a long sheet around himself to hide his legs and the fact that he was only wearing a pair of boxers.

McCree crept out into the dark hallway and squinted. There was just enough light for him to see and he walked on long, bobbing strides to the nearest terminal. “Athena?” he asked, voice thick with sleep and raspy as he tried to work around his missing teeth. “Is there anyone else out?”

“ _ No _ ,” the AI replied. “ _ Should  _ you _ be? _ ”

Ignoring her, he walked quickly toward the kitchen, not wanting to risk someone waking up and finding him. It was bad enough to see  _ Hanzo _ struggling to look at him—and he loved McCree unconditionally. He wasn’t sure if he could handle the disgusted, pitying looks of the rest of the team.

Surprised, McCree stopped in the doorway. That was true, wasn’t it? This was true, definitive proof of that. Hanzo hadn’t shied away from any of this whole thing, had been at McCree’s side as much as he could.

Given how close he had been recently, McCree guessed that he had also requested leave from Winston to take care of McCree in his agony. And now, even seeing him standing on his horribly-mutilated feet, Hanzo was still there. He hadn’t looked at him in pity or disgust—not quite—and though he was still clearly uncomfortable with the changes that had happened to McCree, he was still there.

McCree realized that he was grinning to himself in the darkness of the base, dressed in only a thin pair of boxers and a thin sheet. Shaking his head at his foolishness, he ducked into the kitchen and looked around. The moonlight and the lights from the harbor coming in through the windows was enough for him to see so he didn’t bother turning the lights on as he wandered in search of food.

His first thought was to get some fruit—it would be quick and easy—but something in him rebelled at the idea. Instead, his eyes rested on the door to the walk-in refrigerator. It took only a moment for him to open the simple pin lock and then turn the handle to the door. He didn’t like the wave of cold air that slipped out, but ignored it in favor of the  _ smell _ .

Meat.

_ Feed. _

He took two large, bobbing steps inside and looked around. It was darker in here but his nose led him toward the racks where vacuum-sealed chunks of meat were stored. He grabbed one and dragged it to the ground, crouching over it like a falcon covered its prey.

The thick plastic tore beneath his fingers and he found that he had grabbed a sealed bag of ribeyes. Before he realized what he was doing, he dragged one to his mouth and ate it. His inhuman teeth made short work of it, tearing chunks of it that were easy to swallow—it was his human teeth that bothered him. They itched, were in the way, so he turned his head and spat them out.

Shaking his head, he brought another piece of ribeye, dripping juices, to his mouth. Now, with a mouth full of teeth more suited for this job, he tore into the meat, swallowing chunks of it whole.

He was halfway through the bag when he heard a gasp. Looking up in alarm, he calmed quickly when he saw that it was only Hanzo.

And then he realized what he must look like: crouched over a bag of raw meat like some kind of nightmarish beast, his mouth and hands dripping with blood and whatever else was stored in that packaging.

A pile of bloody human teeth beside him.

“Forgive me,” Hanzo said, voice tight and shaky in a way that McCree had never heard from him. “I didn’t realize that you were still hungry.”

As if he had caught McCree getting a normal snack in the dark of the night.

The thought of what this must look like to Hanzo made McCree’s gut churn. “I hadn’t expected…your eyes.” Hanzo added. “They shine.” He looked back toward the hall. “Come,” he said. “Wipe your mouth and cover up in your sheet again. We can pack that meat away in a bowl—the team will be waking up soon.”

McCree swallowed, opened his mouth to speak, but Hanzo had already ducked out of the doorway to the refrigerator. His husband came back with a large bowl, kneeling carefully in front of McCree. “Clean up,” Hanzo repeated. “I’ll pack your meat. Will you want more?”

“Hanzo,” he managed to gasp, his voice low and raspy.

Hanzo’s smile was shaky, but there wasn’t disgust in his face. “Come on,” he said. “I’m sure you’d hate for the team to see you like this.”

The team.

McCree swallowed and reached for the sheet, which he had tossed aside. He wiped his mouth and then wrapped it around his shoulders again. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to decide what to say, but couldn’t find the words. Instead he pressed a sticky kiss to Hanzo’s forehead and fled like the coward he was.

* * *

Hanzo returned with the bowl and with a red-tinged wad of paper towels. He put the bowl down and immediately went to McCree, reaching up and putting his hands on his cheeks. “My love,” he breathed. “Are you alright?”

There was a smear of blood on his forehead from where McCree had kissed him. “What is wrong with me?” McCree gasped out.

Hanzo’s hands, flat against McCree’s cheeks, twitched. He brushed the calloused tips of his fingers along the jut of his cheekbones, which somehow felt more pronounced beneath Hanzo’s gentle touch. The skin beneath his eyes felt tender and raw, and he wondered if it was because he felt so close to horrified tears or if it was yet another mysterious symptom.

Perhaps it was both because Hanzo’s hands shifted and he used his thumbs to brush away the tears that were welling up. “Whatever it is,” Hanzo said in a low voice, with such conviction that McCree almost believed him. “Whatever it is, we’ll make it through.”

He reached out to Hanzo, wanting nothing more than to hug him closer, but stopped when he realized that his hands were still red and sticky from his early-morning snack. Seemingly reading his mind, Hanzo reached out and tugged him close, pressing a kiss to McCree’s cheek.

“How…” McCree trailed off, not sure how to ask the question that was rattling around in his mind. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know the answer.

But, much like his desire to be closer to his husband, Hanzo seemed to sense this. “I didn’t only fall in love with your ruggedly good looks,” Hanzo teased, though his voice was shaky. Peering down into Hanzo’s eyes, McCree could tell that he wasn’t lying—not about this. “This is you and…” he shook his head as if to shake loose the dark thoughts. “This is still you,” he said firmly. “And I will still be here because I love  _ you _ .”

McCree sucked in a harsh breath, trying to swallow the sobs that were closing up his throat, and did his best to not wonder when, given how he seemed to keep changing into something inhuman, that love will dry up.

* * *

Hanzo brought him more meat in the afternoon though how he managed to sneak it past the entire team—most especially Baptiste and Angela—McCree would never know. He didn’t ask though, shamefully devouring the contents of the bowl and licking away the blood and juices afterwards.

Sitting back and out of the way, Hanzo watched with an unreadable look on his face.

“Do I disgust you?” McCree asked, fearing the answer.

Hanzo paused, cocking his head at McCree, much like a bird. It used to make McCree laugh but dread now made his stomach churn. “No more than usual,” Hanzo said at last, though his joke fell rather flat. He wrung out a rag and began to meticulously wipe the blood and viscera from McCree’s face and hand.

“Why are you still here?” McCree pressed. His voice wavered embarrassingly and he felt on the verge of tears again.

For a moment Hanzo didn’t respond and McCree’s heart sank. “I’m here because I love you,” Hanzo told him quietly. It was too simple—perhaps to Hanzo that was enough, but it wasn’t enough for McCree.

He snarled, baring his terrible, inhuman teeth. “ **Look at me** ,” he demanded in a voice that wasn’t quite his own. “ **I am monstrous!** ”

Hanzo stared back at him. There was concern in his face and fear in his eyes, but just as McCree was about to lash out again, he realized that it wasn’t fear  _ of _ McCree, but  _ for _ him. “I remember saying the same some time ago,” Hanzo said, voice like steel. “‘I am a monster; how could you love me?’ And yet you saw past that. What kind of husband would I be if I could not do the same for you?”

McCree looked away. “It’s not the same.”

“No,” Hanzo agreed. “But at the same time it is. You are still the man I love and nothing can change that—not even your outward appearance.”

McCree curled in on himself, turning away. In two long strides, he sat on the bed. His steps were springy and he bobbed up and down in the air far more than he was used to—understandable, given the “extra” joints in his feet.

When he turned around, he found Hanzo where he had left him, watching McCree with an unreadable look on his face. Irrationally, McCree felt  _ furious _ . Why was he being stared at like he was some kind of specimen to study? Like he was a beetle beneath Hanzo’s foot?

Hanzo stepped closer, bringing the basin of water and the pink-stained rag. “You will get the bed dirty again,” he chided gently and resumed cleaning off McCree’s bloody maw as if nothing had happened.

Looking away, McCree let Hanzo wipe down his face. “If this gets too bad,” he said very slowly, dread solidifying in his chest like a ball of ice. “If this…doesn’t stop…promise me you’ll put a bullet in my brain.”

It was another long minute before Hanzo spoke again. “And who determines this?” he asked mildly. It wasn’t a ‘no’ and McCree wasn’t sure if he was relieved or afraid. But Hanzo had always been very practical—no doubt he knew that it would be useless to try and talk McCree out of what, to Hanzo, was a spectacularly stupid idea.

Still, McCree considered that, trying to fight back the waves of horror and revulsion that crashed over him like the tides. “I don’t know,” he admitted reluctantly. “When I stop being me, I suppose.”

Hanzo hummed thoughtfully. He put the basin aside and cupped McCree’s cheeks with his callused hands. “You are still you,” he said after a long look into McCree’s eyes. “You’re you enough to look at me and speak like this and to worry about such things. Right now, there is nothing for you to worry about. Until that moment when I cannot look into your eyes and see you staring back at me…” he trailed off and closing his eyes, pressed his forehead against McCree’s. “Then I will do…that I must.”

Releasing a breath that he didn’t know he was holding, McCree dragged Hanzo closer and curled up around him. 

* * *

The next morning, McCree woke up with itchy eyes and his pillow soaked in saliva. His mouth could no longer close, his jaw forced open by a swollen tongue. He almost thought that it was something else entirely, perhaps a sign of some kind of anaphylactic reaction before he realized that he could not only still breathe, but his tongue was not truly  _ swollen _ …

It had simply grown too long to fit in his mouth. 

Now it drooped past his chin, the skin seemingly thick enough to protect itself from his inhuman teeth. He groaned at his own reflection, glad that Hanzo wasn’t there to witness this new monstrosity. That was the only explanation for this damnation. 

McCree had never been religious—or rather, after all he had seen, he was  _ no longer _ religious—but this...this was enough for him to shake that belief. What had happened but some kind of damnation? This was inhuman, unnatural. How could science even hope to explain  _ this? _

His own panicked thoughts were interrupted as he looked closer in the mirror. A thick drop of saliva slid down his tongue to drop with a wet  _ plop _ in the sink basin. Annoyingly, his eyes itched and he lifted a hand to scratch, then scratch again. 

Snarling in frustration as first one eye, then the other itched worse and worse. Part of it was him paying attention to it and the more he paid attention to it, the more it itched. He peered into the mirror again, wondering if there was something caught in his eye that was irritating it. 

What he saw instead, now that he thought to look at his eyes instead of his mouth, was a milky layer of white—a second eyelid. 

Like some kind of beast. 

McCree felt his stomach heave, another thick glob of saliva dripping down his mangled tongue in revulsion. He truly was becoming a monster. Somehow this, not any other horrific changes to his body, was the final straw. This thing, minor in comparison to his mangled feet or his twisted jaw or his horrifying new teeth and new appetites.

He scratched his eyes again, this time with his claws and not the backs of his knuckles. He wanted this gone—he wanted this  _ done _ , even if it meant clawing out his own eye. 

It hurt, the nails of his fingers drawing agonizing lines of pain. Claws, he thought to himself. For once he wanted something from the horrible mangling of his body—he wanted claws, to tear out this horrible abomination that was now his eye. 

Give him claws to end this—or better, give him Peacekeeper so that he might die with his weapon in his hand. 

The satisfaction of that thought distracted him from the pain for a moment. He dragged his fingers and nails deep into the skin of his brow and eye. There was a  _ pop _ and the feeling of something wet and viscous dripping down his face. 

It hurt, burned, but only as bad as Deadeye and felt no worse than that terrible itch. And in that eye, the itch had stopped, replaced with a dull, throbbing pain—a marked improvement, he would say, despite the consequences. 

His right eye no longer itched but now his other eye felt even worse because of that reprieve. That was fine; he knew what to do now to make that terrible itch go away. 

“Jesse!” a familiar voice cried and he turned with a snarl, baring his fangs in fury. The world somehow seemed so much different with only one eye. 

There was a creature in front of him that stood on oddly-shaped legs. It yelled again, cried, “Jesse, no!” but he didn’t realize what it had been saying to him at first. 

He snarled, bristling into a defensive posture when more creatures entered the room with him. The one in front, the one that had cried out, was Not An Enemy but the ones behind it? Opening his jaws wide to bare all of his fangs, he shrieked, the sound echoing off of the tile walls and floor. 

“ _ Kou lan guet! _ ” one of the other creatures cried. 

“Back up!” the first one said. “Back up!” 

The other two obeyed; the one that hadn’t spoken yet said, “Be careful, Hanzo.” 

“Jesse,” the first one said softly. “Oh, Jesse.” 

There was a pop, inaudible to anyone’s hearing—a pop much like the bursting of an eye beneath clawed hands—as the human that was Jesse McCree disappeared and in his place stood something else.

* * *

Hanzo had woken up early that morning. 

Winston, Dr. Ziegler, and Dr. Augustin had called a meeting of the entire team where they discussed the changes to McCree. It absolutely violated HIPAA codes, but he supposed that once you were no longer verifiably human, HIPAA may no longer apply. 

At this point he wasn’t sure where his nausea was coming from: his disgust at the situation, or from the sickness that was beginning to get worse as McCree’s progressed. 

He discreetly adjusted his jacket to cover the way that his skin hung slack over his body. Most people thought that he was losing weight over worry if they noticed anything. Only he seemed to see the signs—even the medics, who were most likely more concerned with McCree, didn’t seem to notice. 

In some ways, that was the worst part: nobody noticed. Nobody asked. 

They just assumed that he was fine. 

Mei was casting him concerned looks. Her hand twitched like she wanted to touch his arm in comfort and he was ridiculously reassured that she didn’t. A touch now would reveal what he had been hiding. 

That kind of revelation would mean that they would treat him the same way they were treating McCree.

He struggled with his nausea and gave Mei a wan smile which she tentatively returned. 

“It will be okay,” she said with a confidence that Hanzo couldn’t match. He knew that she meant well but...she didn’t know.

Nobody knew what was happening. 

At least, not until Dr. Augustin and Dr. Ziegler brought out the pictures. 

The team cried out in horror—even Mei. They talked about what to do, as if Hanzo weren’t there—as if McCree was no longer able to make such decisions. They spoke of him like a creature, not a man. 

Hanzo bit his lip until it bled. It was just as well that he hadn’t reported McCree’s new changes to them. The change to his jaw, the removal of all of his human teeth—spirits, his  _ eyes _ —would all make them terrified. 

And so it should. 

They did not deserve McCree, scared, skulking creatures that they were. They did not deserve his light, his rugged smile—they did not even deserve this monstrous grin that McCree now had, the split in his mandibles that Hanzo had noticed earlier that morning. 

No, Hanzo knew that they were not worthy. Who had stayed by McCree’s side through the pain? Who had dabbed the sweat from his brow? Had made him take his pills and supplements, had massaged his aching muscles and draped warm cloths over his hurting bones? 

Surely not them. It had been Hanzo, who fed McCree by hand like a child, who lay beside him at night and listened to his soft cries of pain. They had not suffered with Hanzo—they had not suffered with McCree! Nobody had thought to ask such things. 

Nobody had asked after McCree. Not in a meaningful way. It had become perfunctory—a greeting rather than an honest inquiry of his health. 

“Hey Hanzo, how’s Jesse?” Lena would ask as she Blinked around the corner. 

“Good morning Hanzo, no change?” Dr. Augustin would ask as he made coffee for himself and Dr. Ziegler. 

Nobody would wait for a response. 

“I think we know what we must do,” Dr. Ziegler said and Hanzo looked up. Her expression was pitying and that just made the rage in his throat burn ever brighter. “Hanzo...surely you can see that he’s suffering?”

How could she know? He wondered. Had she been there to witness it? No, for if she had she would know that McCree was better. Look how much he had eaten the day before; look how much stronger he was getting. 

“What kind of medical professional seeks death?” he asked sharply. 

Dr. Ziegler gave him a pitying look. “Hanzo, his health has been deteriorating. He hasn’t been eating and he’s been getting weaker. Do you think that this is how he would want to go?” 

That was untrue, Hanzo wanted to scream. McCree had a healthy appetite. He’d been eating the night before. It had been an entire raw shoulder of pork which he had torn apart with his clawed hands, had devoured with his enormous, split jaws. 

Hanzo said none of this, instead scowling at Dr. Ziegler. How would she react if she knew that he was changing too? Would she advocate for his death?

“He is getting better,” Hanzo said stiffly. 

To his surprise, Mei came to his rescue. “Surely there is another way?” she asked. “There  _ must _ be other options. Surely this kind of decision would not be up to us.”

Winston sighed. “It’s up to us as far as him being a part of Overwatch.” 

“So you’re going to kick him out so he can die alone?” Mei asked hotly. “Here, he has access to the best medical care and the most brilliant minds. Will you deny him that too?”

Dr. Ziegler and Winston both looked uncomfortable. “It is something to think about,” Dr. Augustin said gently. “And a serious consideration given how limited our resources are.” 

“No,” Mei said stubbornly. “This is not how this works—this  _ should not _ be how this works. It isn’t for us to make these decisions—it is for Hanzo and McCree to decide on their own.” 

Hanzo rubbed his forehead, trying not to be sick at the loose way his skin moved over his face. “I think we’re done here—or at least, I am.” 

“Hanzo,” Genji began and stopped. 

Shaking his head, Hanzo stood up and left. “Mei is right,” Winston said reluctantly as Hanzo walked toward the door, trying to hide the way he was limping. “But whether McCree and Hanzo are active members...that is a decision for another time. We will take a group vote at a later date—I encourage everyone to think deeply on this matter.” 

“Hanzo!”

He didn’t turn around at the sound of Dr. Ziegler’s voice. There was nothing for her to say to him after that morning’s meeting. When he stopped to key open the door to his and McCree’s quarters, both medics had followed him. 

“Hanzo—” Dr. Ziegler tried again but Hanzo’s attention was not on her, but on the empty bed.

On the empty bed and the low snarl of pain coming from the bathroom. “Jesse!” Hanzo cried, sprinting for the bathroom. Then he saw the gore dripping down McCree’s face, the gaping hole of his empty eye socket. 

McCree twisted and bared his fangs, the lower flanges of his jaw widening with his low snarl. His clawed hands, tipped in gore, were held ready to claw out his other eye. “Jesse, no!”

“ _ Kou lan geut! _ ” Baptiste cried in shock.

Hanzo whirled. “Back up!” he snapped. “Back up!” 

“Be careful, Hanzo!” Dr. Ziegler warned.

He could see it, the exact moment where everything snapped. One moment, there was a hint of Jesse McCree in the creature’s eyes; then it was gone. “Jesse,” he breathed. “Oh, Jesse.” 

* * *

He was getting strange looks, now. After what had happened in their quarters, when Dr. Ziegler and Dr. Augustin had burst in and found the strange creature that McCree had become, things had changed.

They kept McCree in confinement when it became clear that he would attack anything that moved.

Anything that wasn’t Hanzo.

He continued to care for McCree while the team gave him pitying looks. Those looks weren’t searching though—they were too concerned with hiding their pity and revulsion from Hanzo for them to look too closely.

In some ways it was good—otherwise, they would have witnessed the same changes going through Hanzo. Or rather, the same changes…and yet they were different.

His teeth fell out, but nobody noticed because Hanzo rarely spoke anymore. They didn’t talk to him, only whispered ‘oh, poor Hanzo, what a shame’. And if he was silent when they did speak, they didn’t further pursue a conversation.

He didn’t eat with the team, instead sharing meals with the creature that his husband had become. And nobody wanted to see those petal-like jaws splitting to devour chunks of meat, so nobody was there to witness Hanzo partaking in the raw meat as well.

They  _ did _ notice that his skin grew sallow, but nobody commented, at least not to his face. Surely, they all assumed, seeing one’s husband become a monstrous creature was enough to make anyone nauseous—and worry was enough to explain why he seemed to be losing weight, why his skin hung loose on his frame.

One day there would be no hiding it, Hanzo knew. One day someone would figure out that there was something wrong and ask. Thus far he had been able to hide his pain even from his husband—though to be fair, he had been distracted by his own transformation.

Thus far he had been lucky, and one day that luck would run out.

He ducked into McCree’s enclosure and watched the creature that was his husband pace.

With his new hind claws, he had a peculiar bobbing gait, making him look like some kind of bird. His tail, which had grown in after two days of excruciating pain, was almost rat-like, hairless though with that same leathery skin as on his legs. It flicked behind him like a whip and for all its furious lashings, it was always tender when it wrapped affectionately around Hanzo’s waist.

McCree’s face no longer resembled anything human, hadn’t for a while. Perhaps McCree himself hadn’t noticed it at first—certainly the medics hadn’t—but somehow Hanzo hadn’t been spared that naivety. Hanzo had watched as his jaw had pushed out, his nose sliding upwards like hot wax that had been melted; what had once been a single mandible had split into multiple “petals”, connected by a thin flap of membranous skin and a ridge of fangs. When his lower jaws were closed, it gave him a peculiar dewlap that hung below his jaws.

The creature looked at Hanzo and moved quickly across the enclosure. He didn’t try to leave, stopping just in front of Hanzo and lowering himself to nudge his large, blunt muzzle against Hanzo’s cheek. 

“My love,” Hanzo breathed, running his hand over McCree’s thick skin. He was pale, his skin ashen like a corpse. It was like his worst nightmare—seeing McCree’s skin pale as if in death. 

But McCree was here. He had to remember that. Even if the creature that McCree had become didn’t have a spark of humanity in that single, glowing eye, this was still McCree. 

And Hanzo loved him. 

With a low chuff, McCree nudged his cheek and brought a clawed hand up as if to stroke Hanzo’s cheek. The arm on his left side was smaller than the one on his right; it was still growing to match, but for now he favored it. 

Hanzo stroked along McCree’s jaw, rubbed his fingers along the new ridges of his spine. It was a new growth and still sensitive. McCree huffed and obligingly lowered his head to allow Hanzo to run his fingers over the divots. Perhaps in time they would grow out long like the frills of a lionfish, but Hanzo wondered if he would be there to witness it. 

They were on borrowed time. 

“We had a meeting today,” Hanzo told McCree, though there was no indication that the creature could understand him. At least, not in anything as complex as words. From the spark in McCree’s one remaining eye, he could tell that there was something wrong. 

McCree’s lips peeled back to reveal his jagged teeth. His tongue scooped out, wrapping around Hanzo’s arm like some kind of slimy snake as he peered closely at Hanzo. 

“They discussed you,” Hanzo continued. “They want to euthanize you.” As if he understood more than just that Hanzo was upset, McCree growled. He looked like he would toss his head if his tongue hadn’t been coiled around Hanzo’s arm. 

Hanzo gently extricated his arm from the gentle clasp of McCree’s tongue and smiled at his low sound. Even like this, without a trace of humanity left in his dead eye, McCree craved his company.

He patted McCree’s cheek with his other hand. “It’s okay,” he assured the grotesque creature, ignoring how his skin swung loose on his frame with the motion. “I’m only getting your food.”

McCree’s head lifted in interest but he remained in place, as mild as a trained dog while Hanzo lowered the anti-grav pad carrying the covered crate with McCree’s meal. He smiled again when McCree made a soft noise of surprise to find an entire side of beef in the crate.

“We need our strength,” Hanzo told him urgently. “Eat quickly.”

Either out of hunger or because he understood the urgency of Hanzo’s words, McCree pulled out the meat and began tearing away large chunks. Bones crunched beneath the terrifying power of his jaws.

As he had taken to doing, McCree tore off chunks for Hanzo, presenting them to him proudly with a little muffled croon. “You’re right,” Hanzo murmured and McCree peered at him, head tilted strangely to keep his whole eye on Hanzo.

It reminded Hanzo so much of when McCree was human. He wore a similar expression whenever he’d ask,  _ oh I’m right, am I? _

Hanzo swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yes, you are, you ass,” he said with a weak chuckle. “We need our strength—we’re running out of time. Eat well and eat quickly.”

McCree made an odd sound at that, nudging Hanzo’s hand with the chunk of meat in his hands. It seemed that even like this, McCree was trying to take care of him. Hanzo accepted the morsel and ate it quickly. Satisfied, McCree returned to his feast, pausing every few bites to give Hanzo a piece.

“We will need to run quickly, my love,” Hanzo murmured. “They wish us dead—and I promised you once that I would be the one to put the bullet between your eyes. I cannot…I cannot keep that part of the promise, but I will not sit aside to let them try.”

He looked down at his hands. His skin was beginning to droop like hot wax and yet it didn’t seem like he had lost any muscle tone. Twisting his arm, he found that his elbows and wrists and knuckles were raw and something dark seemed to be protruding from beneath the skin. Like the sole of a shoe that had been worn thin.

He picked at the skin of a knuckle and peeled away a strip like a hangnail. As if that had been the keystone holding him together, the skin of that arm began to stretch and droop further, slinking off of his arm.

And yet he did not see blood and tissue and muscle beneath it. No, there was blood and fluid but it was as if it had been a blister over his entire arm; the thick layer of skin fell away from thick scales.

Turning, he found McCree watching him, a strange kind of eagerness in his wild eye. As if he expected this; as if he had been waiting.

“I’ll join you soon,” Hanzo promised. “But first we must escape.”

By the time the team realized they were gone, there was little left but an empty crate covered in viscera, and chunks of dead skin like the remains of some rubber coating. They followed it as far as they could but eventually that trail was lost to the woods and distance covered by two creatures that were no longer human.

* * *

“I don’t believe it,” the young new medic scoffed. “It’s just an urban legend!”

Dr. Ziegler looked out the window. Her pale blond hair hid the thick streaks of silver that were slowly winning as she succumbed to age. In just the right light she shone as if adorned with gold and silver. “Surely you’ve heard the noises in the woods?” she asked mildly. “That  _ is _ why you asked, wasn’t it?”

It was a rhetorical question. The young medic-in-training had asked about the wild howls and shrieks of the woods, about the way that the trees seemed darker and how the very air felt cold.

Why there was a rule against entering those woods that was punishable by immediate dismissal.

The medic’s friend, one of the engineers, looked fascinated. “Why not surround the forest?” she asked. “Why just a line?”

“They didn’t attack, not unless we attacked them first,” Dr. Ziegler replied. “So we left them alone. Let them have a moment of peace.” 

When the medic opened his mouth to argue, something stopped him. Perhaps it was the sad way she was looking out the window, the way she had curled around herself. He stopped, and looked at her, really looked at her. 

“Some things we can’t change,” Dr. Ziegler said quietly as if to herself. “Some wounds you can’t heal. Sometimes, you just need to accept it, and sometimes there are just some things that can’t be explained. Man or beast, warrior or healer. We all must face it sometime.” 

The subject was dropped but the engineer was still curious.

That evening when she saw Dr. Ziegler walking across the dark park toward the electrified fence, she followed discreetly. The doctor sat on a quiet park bench near the fence and sighed.

Perhaps she just wanted a quiet moment, the engineer mused and was about to turn away to give her some privacy when movement beyond the fence caught her attention. It was too dark to make out the shape, but three eyes shone in the moonlight from two things that were too large to be human.

There was the blood-curdling ululation that characterized this particular base—what had, the engineer and her friend had thought, inspired the story of two agents that had transformed into monsters.

She watched in horrified awe as one set of eyes bobbed, birdlike; then they disappeared.

The trees fell silent again and shaking, the engineer hurried back to her dorm.

**Author's Note:**

> Parts of McCree's design are based on fossils. My notes say that he has a skull shape similar to a short-nosed bear with a double-row of banana-shaped teeth (as T. Rex teeth are typically described). He has thick skin like a pachyderm and a long looong toooongue. His missing eye and the sealed-over socket is based off of [Jazzy-purrs](https://www.instagram.com/jazzy.purrs/?hl=en) while his spinal protrusions and segmented tail are based off of the xenomorphs from the Alien series; his peets are based off of the curled-over feet of the aliens in Independence Day. He has a split jaw similar to what you see in the hypo creatures in The Isle. 
> 
> Meanwhile, Hanzo has a body-shape similar to a Kaprosuchus, specifically based off of the long hind leggy designs you see in Ark: Survival Evolved. His spinal protrusions are based off of a lion fish's while his mouth and jaw have structures similar to goblin sharks or moray eels.
> 
> Feel free to come and yell at me on Twitter at [Dracoduceus](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus). 
> 
> ~DC


End file.
